Madrid - Today BETTER FINANCE’s Managing Director, Guillaume Prache, addressed the Santander International Banking Conference and called on the industry and regulators for more transparency on performances and fees as well as decent and higher returns for pension savings products: a requisite for EU citizens to get an adequate pension income.

In turn, the EU regulators should allow institutional investors such as insurers, and individual pension investors who can do it, to invest much more into equities, and in particular into small and mid-cap equities.

Since SMEs are the only ones to create jobs in the EU economy, increasing investments in SME equity is not only a requisite to boost jobs and growth, but also to achieve pension adequacy: over the last 17 years the first 50 European stocks returned only 18% (less than inflation), while a much broader basket of more than 1000 European stocks returned + 68%.